Playmobil figures feared lost in Great Fire of Guildford

We at El Reg's Playmobil unit fear the worst following a Guildford school's miniature re-enactment of London's hottest historic moment.

Pewley Down Year 2 infants were earlier this week treated to a "live demonstration of how quickly the blaze would have spread during the Great Fire of London in 1666".

Teacher Rosie Welch explained to Get Surrey: “Our topic for the whole term is all about the Great Fire of London. The children have been leaning about what London was like before the Great Fire.

“We made big models in the biggest boxes that we could find and made them into buildings. They were all accurate, the children knew all about the wooden beams and the thatched roofs.

"We had about 25 boxes and all the buildings had a purpose, the person living there would have an occupation. We didn’t just have the bakery, we had things like a blacksmith and an apothecary."

So far so good, but Welch continued: “Then on Monday we used Playmobil people to tell the story of how the fire started in Pudding Lane.”

She chillingly added: “It went up fairly spectacularly, it was really brilliant for the children to see it spread, we watched as the bakery went up first, there was a fair bit of smoke, and then the fire spread to the other buildings, we saw it jump across the roads."

Enough. While Get Surrey is quick to point out that Surrey Fire and Rescue Service operatives were on hand to make sure everything went according to plan, it has unforgivably failed to report the fate of Playmobil baker Thomas Farriner and, crucially, his maidservant.

Worse still, its entertaining pictures of the conflagration contain no exclusive on-the-spot image of their escape, or otherwise. ®